Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel (22 page)

As for birth, barely mentioning it other than as the circumstance for which her kind was both anointed and chained, she passed it by as no mystery to
her—
just as the eye of a needle might neatly engulf a camel, meanwhile convincing itself that the camel had swallowed it. Birth by any biological means—viviparous, oviparous, animalcular, virginal—is of course what we laugh at, in the season.

I understood of course what was happening; She in turn was having
her
vision. She too had a certain fidelity toward her origins. As for death, that question-answer she had so touted, I couldn’t make out whether she willingly left it behind—until I reminded myself that, just as my vision had had some of You in it, so would Ours have a place in hers.

Matter of fact, being rather personally on Here myself, I wondered, a little hoped, whether among the great grab bag of things she saw to enumerate, there mightn’t be a Me in it—but she merely finished with a sigh as great, and as if politely, once more said, “What do
you
see … Marie?”

I knew what I saw at that moment, in our joint sky. I saw that home planet astride the reaches which a One might yet return to, that long teardrop of grace from which, once wholly a You, I should be barred.

“What do you see in the night sky?”

And Marie finally answered her, with that single word which even on Here has its dignity. “We.”

But, in the brusque way events kick up their heels at eternity here, I was given no time to reflect on it. A happening was indeed interrupting me. For, to my horrow, I observed that the crack in the roof was widening, although, clever criminal that it was, it was managing this all but imperceptibly.

And now I must confess to a naivete so utter that a You may laugh at it seasonably all the year round. I had no idea that the
raise en scene
was so complex here. When a One of Us has a happening, everyone nearby turns to face him, affording just the mild degree of simultaneity which will be comfortable; we are an attentive race for whom it would be unthinkable that a member of it need step over any of the lintels of life quite alone. All the really important steps of life are in full quadrille. This being so, advice, since never needed, is never given, affording us a sweetly open laissez-faire in place of the fierce huddle of privacy for which you must be forever on guard. But the shocking simultaneity with which events public or private were permitted to engulf people here would never occur to us. The possibility that, within the same quarter-mile moment of duration—or frequently much less, what with the cram and stretch of your allotments here—people might drown at sea, strut the sidewalks, dice away their patrimony, feast, strangulate in hospital, or simply be gazing sun-focused at a tablecloth, had never before crossed my mind—much less that all over your planet, perhaps your universe, people went on stewing in the same sort of broth.

My mind! My cleanly conceptual mind, across whose pure plain there had never stalked more than one neat aberration—must I not mourn forever that calm savannah, that zoological silence! Into which slid Two-ness, the snake. What dazed me most was that even the ways of comprehending the variable world branched off as one approached. No sooner had I resigned myself to the dangers which ran alongside the admissable joys of a world where
objects
were let be unbridled, than I was confounded with the appalling disorder of its
events.
Up from that melee, a couple of numb thoughts in counterweight promptly immobilized me:
We—
have no accidents.
They—
take no responsibility.

So, meanwhile I sat on my crack. And below it, though this couldn’t go on forever, those two—tow, two,
two—
went right on talking. Would it be the same for two a Harrys? I looked down at the ground. No, as yet I wasn’t afraid of heights. But it seemed probable that to stay where I was might be a part of my gravitational training—especially where the listening was so instructive. So, lying as flat as a being so curved could, and careful not to make any movement which might further inflame the treacherous substance I was lying on—I remained.

And what I now saw was—my first appendage. Ah, it is a one thing to sneer at your
mechanical
ways of extending yourselves—but this—! Conceive of the occasion! After such passage of time immemorial as could not be mathematically figured even by a Schlovsky-Schmidt, a Wheeler-Oppenheimer, not even if one added to these the services of a Heisenberg-Hoyle plus even this year’s most brilliant qualifier for the Cambridge tripos—after all that time, a One, of the most illustrious, unprofaned incestry, saw his first violation of the sacred outline. And it was no longer a perversion. It wasn’t even a dream.

I knew what the appendage was of course, or thought I did, via that ever-resourceful book of animal plates, plus—though no squirrel was around for me to check on—certain fugitive memories of the small fauna which had patrolled before my glass. And though I was a bit middled about the number of such proper to creatures here—yes, it was what I thought; of course it was!

Slowly it exposed itself, white against its black draperies, while I reddened—really now, must it! Coyly, it seemed to linger a moment, weaving slightly against the figure of the being to whom it belonged. Yes, it was graceful. It was also in a way repellent. The sight of what one has always been forbidden is always a little sinister—and its performance, alas, inordinately clever. Finally—it extended itself; oh what a length, after all!

Finally, its owner spoke. “
Au ’voir,
Marie. Shake!”

Then, in the usual two-ly, which I ought to have been used to by now, I saw another oddity. Marie’s color did not change a whit, unlike mine. She was after all going the
other
way; ships that pass! But in that rather stout gray outline of hers, whose texture, tell the truth, was still far short of transubstantiation, what did I see—just above the median horizontal and parallel with that waiting appendage—but a dent, a puckering as of a swift intake, a failure of arc that strove at once to repair its own extension, but for a quivering moment was unable. I watched in fascination—and of course, a vestigial sense of duty-watch. Then it was gone, leaving her form as perfectly inflated as before—and me gazing down on my own. Except for color, I was—as was. But the crack was now smiling to the width of an inch. I quickly looked away.

“Think yerself pretty clever, eh, yer nasty bit of—? Wotch-er trying to do, give Us a setback!”

Uh-oh. At this from Marie, my computer section, which has always had a weakness for dialect, positively chattered away at me—seems it had suddenly had revealed to it that Marie’s origins were not all she had pretended them to be. It went on to point out to me that neither were my mentor’s—or at least rather obscure, certainly not native to this region. And reaching a grand point of insolence, it asked itself, and covertly me, whether the fact mightn’t be that, by and large, most dissidents
anywhere
were either foreigners—or
runts.
In a final burst of ambition, it rattled off a request that I pose this question to it directly, promising me in return an answer which would
not
be by and large.

Somewhat shaken, I turned off the connect. Since we do these things
in
our Own person, the relation between a One and his computer section is not separate, but neither is it equal. If this went on, I should have to get rid of it, maybe even let it go off on its own. Ever since coming here it had been getting above itself, and this despite a rapid downgrade in performance—witness its slapshod job of work on my vowels. Machines tend to do this on Here. Something in the atmosphere.

“I apologize, Marie.”

No matter what rude hints from mechanical snobs, here was a lady—a discrimination perhaps outside their realm now, and new to me myself. Her appendage, by the way, was still extended, indeed the only part of her to be seen, she being almost directly beneath me. And by now, this appendage seemed to me—what with that geometric progression of appetites which is here called “getting used to”—it even looked to me now rather sinuously beautiful. I found myself almost shy of learning its name. But since I couldn’t go on calling it an appendage forever, and it was certainly not an umbrella, I turned on the comput-put again, which thereupon snorted, “HAND!” omitting the usual accessory data, and—with what untold effects on my progress, not all of them bad, I daresay—went out of order for the whole afternoon. I know better of course. Only fools are onthropomorphic about machines. But, since I have been here, I find that though I like many of them very much, I can’t tell one from the other. Something in the atmosphere.

Hand. A
hand. A
hand.
I watched it closely, in order to detect its function, whereupon it withdrew, perhaps to spare my sensibilities. With my usual stingy ideas about the differentiation here, I was of course assuming that its function was limited to—one.

“Sorry,
ma vieille,
I couldn’t ’elp—but is that material you’re in—really protoplasm. May I touch?”

Separatism already. Their egos are enviably powerful.

“You saw the prospectus; we all did.” Marie meanwhile retreated past my angle of vision. “And kindly stop
gendering
me. These Outlooks have their Onfluences. Wiser if you gave up French altogether.”

Really, what a pill. I scarcely dared look down now—the split in the roof had stretched to a smirk.

“Okay, bebbee.”

“Take that word … away. And no, you can’t touch, thanks to One-ness. One’s got a sort of all-over electrical vest takes care of that. Very comfy, too.”

“You could turn it off.”

“Ha-ha to you, ducky. It’s forbidden. Besides, One can’t.”

Which is the great contrast between our forbiddens, and yours.

“There’s always a loophole,” said She, walking toward Marie.

And a one—and a One—to see through it.

Maybe she was looking for it now, for I could no longer see either of them. What they were in must be a corner. O philosophy. If I fell, would it be round a corner I came?

“Marie …” came from below. “Marie … look up … do you see what I see? Straight up!”

That lovely adverbative. I was enchanted.

“Hah. No yer don’t. You’ll not get One to take one’s Observo off you till you’re safely away.”

“Hélas.
That may take quite a time.”

And now, were we all back where we started?—which we would be, at home, of course. Those two were. But the crack grinned up at me, reminding me that I was a three.

“We have Time,” said Marie. “For once and same. No more trickles.”

“Marie … listen. Very beautiful of course, all that We-ing. But mebbee for me—you think possible I ’ave pick the
wrong
elsewhere? For you, fine, but for me, mebbee I would be better off in one where—”

Where there were no pronouns at all? But that’s the beyond!

Marie cut in quickly. “You’ll feel better, when you get to—America.”

“America!”

America!

There was more to corners than I thought. More things than You came round them.

“But that’s an ordinary elsewhere, Marie! It’s on the planet!”

Everywhere is an elsewhere to somebody. When less precariously situated, one might point out to them that I, formerly of Ours, was
here.
As for America, since we were both going there, mightn’t it be a sort of way-stop for all those whose pronouns were in transit?

“O … is it? One’s been away … Anyway, it’s Orders.”

“Good God, Marie,” said my mentor. “I hope you girls ’aven’t fuck things up altogether.”

I flipped the connect. Not a sound. Then an agitated one, “Turn me
off!
”

“Everything is on Order,” said Marie. “Except your lack of progress. Luckily We can make use of it.”

“But I am suppose to be going
Out! Off!
”

“Later on,” said Marie. “That is … later on-on. Pres-presently, you’re to stay as you are-are.”

Pedagogue.

“And what I am suppose to do there?”

“You’re to—help us with the migration. You’ll be right in the center of things, don’t worry. In fact it’s called the Center.”

“And will
you
be there? The way
you
are.”

“Jolly right, dear. But One couldn’t do what you—” Here Marie rather choked. “You’re to—head off Harry.”

There walked before us then the greatest silence yet; in fact, it was a silence that was positively running, in which, both parties below, maneuvering away from it, came to a stop directly under party a three.

“As I—am, Marie?”

“Right you are.”

“… Then, I ’ave to inform you—”

Here a sound unclassifiable. Or no. If a person could have a—If in a person there could suddenly
be
a crack—

“—I am not … as I was.”

The silence, which had finally run out of hearing, came back.

“O,” said Marie. “One had an Omen. All along One had an—One does hope there hasn’t been a rather dreadful—”

“Mistake? That I cawn’ say. But one look at me would certainly tip the tumble to ’Arry.”

“O O O,” said Marie, and I caught myself just in time, at the cool, pushbottom signal which turns all on groove onstantly toward One-All. “One needs Others. OOOO.” A four-digit alarm was doing better than expected; in fact it was well on the way Out. But she relapsed, crying out, “One can’t do it alone.” Ul-loawoun is what she really said. They mix-multiply their vowels like equations here.

“Per’aps it shoulden’ be done alone,” said my mentor. “Migration. Per’aps it should never.” Why then so invigorated her voice? “Affinities can be dangerous.”

“Have no fears on that score,” said Marie. “The next lot is coming in perfect quadrille.”

“Nevertheless!” What joy in her voice. Joy is a statement put like a question, but only for the sheer pleasure of it. I recognized this without computation, “—nevertheless, ’is-tory ’ave to ’ave its ’eroines, eh Marie?”

“Not where One is concerned,” said Marie abjectly. “Not without drillection.”

“Then, look
UP!
” my mentor cried without warning, as if on a countersignal. “Look at the sky, the skylight!
Look at our pupil.
Our
Hero!
Look at—HIM!”